


The Polo Grounds

by DanteBeatrice77



Series: Pyrite Universe [3]
Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: Boston Red Sox, F/F, Family Drama, the Isles parents have some atoning to do, vacation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:55:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27925633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanteBeatrice77/pseuds/DanteBeatrice77
Summary: About a year and a half after Jane took her and Maura's daughter, Elena Giuliana, into an active shooter situation, nearly ruining her marriage, their family has mended its wounds and become strong again. This summer, they've decided to spend the week of the fourth of July with Constance and Arthur Isles - and Maura's rocky relationships with both her parents become center stage. Jane and Elena help smooth things over in classic Rizzoli fashion.
Relationships: Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli
Series: Pyrite Universe [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900306
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been rolling around in my head since the beginning of the summer. Jane and Maura always hang out with the Rizzolis around major holidays, especially in fic, so I thought it would be interesting to see the opposite play out. There are some adult themes in this work (as made obvious by the rating), but if reading about marital infidelity is triggering for you, there is some discussion of that throughout. Also, Maura calls Jane daddy (because she definitely is one LOL) during a particularly intimate moment, so maybe a slight kink warning? Anyway, if that's not your thing, that's in chapter two. Now that this is on the page and not eating away at me, I'll be going back to working on the future chapters of BKS. Enjoy!

“You’re late, my love, and not a little late.  _ Very  _ late,” Maura Rizzoli’s wedge heels clapped against the brick sidewalk outside of her Beacon Hill home. She struggled with three identical Louis Vuitton overnight duffles and a garment bag on her way to the trunk space of the Audi Q7 that Jane had just pulled up to the curb in.

Jane Rizzoli snatched the bags from her and waved a foot under the bumper of the car to pop open the back. “I know, I know,” she said, shoving the luggage away next to a bag of little league gear and a first aid kit, and then slamming the hatchback shut. “I’m sorry, work was… work.”

Maura ignored her and leaned in for a hello kiss. She now had her purse on one wrist and her phone in the other hand, but she savored the wet lips against hers and Jane’s hand on her belly anyway. When they pulled away, Jane’s eyes danced in lust - Maura’s skin glistened against her sunkissed light hair and the white floral sundress that came together with a sash at her midsection. The front’s slit rode up salaciously high, showing off the smoothness of her thighs if she turned just so. The cap, however, the magnet drawing Jane’s glance, was the deep plunge of the fabric on her chest. The curve of each breast and the exposed skin of her sternum proved she still knew how to turn a Rizzoli head. 

She saw Jane’s damp work suit and she wrinkled her nose. “On top of it all, you’re sweaty. You should shower.”

“Maura, we don’t have time!” Jane whined, “and even if we did, it’s humid as shit out here. I’d be drenched as soon as we walked back outside. We have to be in Newport in two and a half hours and it’s the weekend before the fourth.” New England traffic embedded itself in the life of every Bostonian like the most inconvenient of pests, but that was the trade off for New England summer, Jane supposed. Muggy, hot, long, yes. But,  _ but _ , New England summers brought the loveliest of things, too. They brought the sun out so long she and her brothers played til bedtime, they brought Sox pennant runs and so much seafood her belly hurt. More recently, they brought time with Elena without the constraint of school or the responsibility of a full night’s sleep. They brought Maura dressing like  _ this,  _ which usually meant more connectedness between them.

“No discussion,” Maura reiterated, “Elena is upstairs getting dressed, and I suggest you take advantage of that time by starting the water.” 

Jane stomped her foot, lips twisted forward in a pout that hid a grin, and the summer sun that Maura knew Jane loved glinted off the black of her irises. Jane, in well-disguised good humor, finally obeyed. She walked into the house with Maura not far behind, removed her gun and her badge for safekeeping in the lockable desk behind the couch, and bounded up the stairs. 

“Hey kid, you look beautiful,” she said as she leaned against the doorway of the first room in the hall, watching her daughter on the floor fiddle with the strap of her sandals. Elena Giuliana looked like late-June itself in a yellow, sunflower-pattern romper and her wild hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“I’m trying to fix my shoes,” Elena huffed by way of greeting, and Jane laughed. “The buckle is really small.”

“Need help?” Jane asked, uncrossing her arms, knowing in advance what the answer would be. 

“No,” Elena sighed. She continued to struggle, but refused to look up at her parents.

Maura rolled her eyes at their shared stubbornness. “I already asked,” her hand fell away from Jane’s back as she walked towards their own bedroom. “Shower now, please.”

When Jane heard the water blast on from down the hall, she trotted into Elena’s room and scooped her up, placing loud and wet kisses on the side of her head. 

Elena shrieked. “Ma!” Jane ignored her and squeezed her up into her lap. “Ma stop!” the giggles in her throat belied the push of her tiny hands against Jane’s shoulders.

“Nope! Nope nope!” Jane smirked, but three more kisses to the crown of Elena’s head and she was done. 

“Why do we have to dress fancy for this?” Elena asked when Jane rose and dusted off the knees of her pants.

“You’re not dressed that fancy,” Jane quipped. “But we’re hanging out with your grandma and grandpa this week, and you know how they are. Dress codes are just part of it. Polo can kind of be like… baseball soccer on horses. You might like it.”

Elena shrugged. “Maybe,” she quipped right back, being seven and grown after all. 

Jane chuckled at her child’s Rizzoli audacity. “I’m taking a five minute shower, Elena. Then we’re out the door.” Elena nodded as she went back to her other shoe, and Jane jogged over to her own bedroom. 

Maura stood at the junction between the room and the bathroom with a towel on her hooked finger. “I take it that you wrapped up what you needed to this morning,” she said. 

Jane closed the distance between them. In the conditioned air of their home, the steam from the shower and heat from Maura’s body combined into something delectable on her tongue. Her hands ached to run over Maura’s hips, over her ribs, around her shoulders. For time’s sake only, she refrained. Instead, she shook out of her boots and socks first, and then threw her blazer onto the bed behind her. “I know what you’re actually asking,” she made a motion of pulling a thought out of her ear and tossing it to the wayside. “I’m all yours this week, no work talk. Even if I’m gonna be outta my element. Big time.”

“There is no element you can’t adapt to,” Maura whispered to her. She worked surgeon’s fingers against Jane’s belt buckle, with a little shudder through her shoulders when the pants dropped to the ground. “And you know that my parents love you.”

Jane finished undressing, pulled her hair into a bun to preserve its dryness, and then opened the shower door. She shivered when she stepped into the lukewarm spray, but soon became thankful for Maura’s forethought when it started to cool her hot skin. “Yeah, they love me when they’re in my comfort zone.”

“That’s ridiculous, Jane,” Maura chastened Jane’s modesty, “I’m stepping out to get your clothes. I’ll be back.” 

“Don’t make me look like an asshole, Maura!” Jane called out after her as she scrubbed her body in a frenzy. She shaved, pulled the showerhead down and ran it over herself one last time for good measure, and then shut off the water. When she stepped out, Maura had returned with her towel.

“I would never make you look like an asshole,” she said, eyes alive with mischief. She scanned Jane’s nakedness with an open and easy pleasure. Jane turned dark in the summer months, taking on the Arab hues in her Sicilian bloodlines that laid dormant in the winter and fall. Even in spring it didn’t gleam the way it did when the days rolled on into late hours and the city came alive with humid, pulsating intention. 

When Jane came alive with humid, pulsating intention. “So I know what we’re dealing with when we get there, is the parking going to be like a Fenway situation… or like a Somerville gala situation?” she asked, and the way that she floated through the bedroom, naked and unashamed, as though she belonged, delighted Maura.

It thrilled her, the way Jane pulled underwear and a bra from a dresser closest to her side of the bed, unleashing her hair. The furniture sat in its third arrangement in the span of a little over a year - the first before Jane had taken Elena to SolCorp and left her alone, the second when Maura had thrown Jane out of their marriage bed and out of their home for what she had done. This final time, they had decided on the new design together; they spent late nights in bed looking at catalogs, Jane’s head in Maura’s lap as Maura tapped the down arrow of her Macbook on the nightstand. Jane had painted the walls a cool white with an accent gray, and Maura had chosen bedclothes to match. Jane’s outfit, also curated specifically by her, laid out on those bedclothes now.

“More the latter,” Maura replied as she sat on the edge of the bed and watched Jane put a first, then a second, arm through a baby blue pin striped button-up. “But we’re going to be in VIP, so I doubt there’ll be any parking woes.”

“Fancy,” Jane’s eyebrows flew up as she shoved her legs through ironed khaki pants. “I didn’t realize I owned clothes this… polo-appropriate,” she tried as she put her loafers on over her feet.

“You mean pretentious?” Maura smirked, in-tune with Jane and the way she had slipped right back into the comforts of home. Six months from their initial, shaky reunion, and neither they nor Elena had even thought to look back.

“Well, I didn’t want to insult your mother,” Jane said, accepting a kiss from Maura as she rose off the bed. “C’mon. Let’s rustle up Elena and get on the road. Like you said, I made us late.”

“No, I said  _ you  _ were very late,” Maura corrected with a finger up and her purse again in her hand as Jane grabbed a wallet, keys, and RayBans from the vanity where she had dropped them. The vanity had been the one piece that had stayed where it was, a reminder to them both about all the things and positions that made them  _ good  _ together. “Don’t you think,  _ especially  _ knowing you were going into work, that I would plan for us to have a cushion?”

“The match doesn’t start at 2, does it?” Jane smiled, amazed at Maura’s ability to play her so completely.

“No, the match starts at 3:30. The VIP tent opens at 2,” said Maura simply. “ _ Elena Giuliana!”  _ she called down the hall, “we’re leaving now!”

* * *

“You think I should pop the bubble on?” Jane asked through gritted teeth as she maneuvered their car toward their destination, as quickly as holiday traffic would allow.

“Absolutely not,” Maura looked over at Jane and warned. She rubbed her hands vigorously together with the lotion she had dolloped into her palms from her bag. 

“It’s cheating,” Elena called from her booster seat, tablet in her lap. When Jane finally found their exit, she powered it off and swung her feet. The ocean immediately came into view, and Elena marveled at its vastness and the vast amounts of people in the sand. 

“Cheating?” Jane called out in fake horror, eyes meeting her daughter’s in the rearview mirror, “I’m a cop, kid! How is it cheating?” Truth be told, she loved the water as much as Elena, when she could get to it. The sight of its rocking waves sent a pleasant anticipation through her body, even though she had forsaken the traffic of the highway for the crawl of the polo grounds.

“It’s immoral,” Maura said over their banter, “it’s an abuse of power.” 

"A’right, a’right, Mom. I get it – no bubble light,” Jane said through a huff. She tugged at the steering wheel with her left hand, her right arm on the center console, fidgeting in the cadence of impatience.

Maura chuckled and looked out the window. “You call me ‘Mom’ to get under my skin, but I like it,” she said. 

Jane turned beet red and her fingers stopped drumming. She used looking out beyond their windshield as pretense for avoiding eye contact. “Uh,” she tried, then recovered, “well, you are Mom.”

“I am. Pull in here,” Maura smirked as she commanded, a kind ruler. She pointed toward the VIP spots nearest the lane they were in and threw the placard on their dash. 

Jane, though she would never admit it, was relieved to be VIP, especially today. “You know, it’s not too late. We can ditch the polo grounds for the beach.”

Maura pretended to consider it. “The only issue with that is that if you’d like to stay in my parents’ palatial vacation house, you will actually have to… vacation with my parents.”

Jane chuckled. “Good point. It’d probably be awkward to walk out for breakfast tomorrow having played hooky today.”

“I promise that we’ll have a family beach day, just the three of us sometime this week,” Maura added softly when she saw the signs of Jane’s anxiety: the tapping foot, fingers drumming on the steering wheel as she pulled into their parking space. 

“I’m holding you to that,” Jane replied without looking at her. She cut the engine and turned toward Elena Giuliana. “You ready, Elena? I see Grandma and Grandpa already.”

“You do?” Elena gasped, excited despite herself and her penchant for cool level-headedness. “Where?”

Jane smirked. “See the giant white tent over there? They’re the ones who look the most bored,” she said, winking at Maura.

Maura slapped her shoulder. “ _ Jane _ ,” she chastised. 

Jane crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “C’mon, let’s go find ‘em,” she said to Elena. 

The family disembarked, the bright summer sun shining on each of them differently, creating a handsome blend of Maura’s gold flanked by Rizzoli dusk on either side. They locked eyes with Constance and Arthur Isles, two among another fifteen or so people in the tent, and waved back when they were waved to. When they were close enough, Maura took pity on her fidgeting daughter and released her hand so that she could run into Arthur’s open arms. She didn’t release her hold on Jane’s, however.

“Kinda weird that he’s so good with her, right?” Jane said, leaning into Maura’s left side as they made their way.

“I try to dissociate my issues with him from his relationship with Elena. She deserves that. He does, too, I suppose,” Maura answered. She sighed contentedly at the conspiratorial tone in Jane’s voice, and relished the private moment between them before they entered the upper-class fray for the next five or so days. 

“I think that’s very noble of you, Maura,” Jane said honestly. She swung their joined hands lightly. “You’re a good mom.”

Maura’s cheeks turned pink. “I try to dissociate my issues with him from his relationship with you, too.”

“What do you mean?” 

“He likes you very much,” said Maura, “maybe more than he likes me.”

“Well that’s bullshit,” Jane stopped them midstride, turning so that her front faced Maura’s, “he loves you.”

“He does,” Maura nodded, tugging Jane forward again, “but you know he and I don’t always see eye to eye.”

“Oh well. Let Elena do all the heavy lifting with him this week. They’re practically soulmates,” Jane pointed to the young girl and the elder professor hugging tightly. “Don’t look now, but your mother is summoning us to the champagne table.”

Maura sported her first gigawatt smile of the day at the sight of her mother, seventy-two and still so glamorous in white slacks, a red and white striped blouse, and red blazer. They embraced lightly, kissing one another on each cheek twice. “Mom,” she said warmly. “It’s so good to see you.”

“Oh darling, you have no idea,” Constance said into the crown of Maura’s hair, the two of them equal height, Maura in wedges and Constance in heels. “Your father has been talking about this nonstop for weeks.”

Maura pulled back and flitted a glance to her father, making his way to them with Elena scooped up in his grasp. “She’s done much of the same. Jane and I haven’t felt very wanted,” she said with a small smile.

At the mention of her name, Constance stepped forward and held her hand out to Jane, who took it in her own left one. “Well, I suppose we should let them enjoy their time unfettered, then. Jane, how are you?”

Their eyes met behind identical RayBan Wayfarers. “Doin’ good, Constance, thanks,” Jane replied, her shake strong, even though Constance’s fingers hung limply in her grasp. “You?”

“Better now that you’re all here,” Constance said seriously. “We’ve missed you. When Maura said you would be able to take the entire week, we were elated.”

Jane smiled crookedly. “I told you so,” Maura whispered into her ear. Jane shuddered and let her fingers dance to Maura’s lower back where she rested them when Arthur arrived.

“Maura, Jane,” he nodded to them in the warmest greeting he could muster. “Elena’s grown at least a half a foot since I saw her last!” his eyes, normally so tempered, shone brilliantly. His smile, normally so reserved, burgeoned as he spoke about her. Her raucous laughter at his tickling warmed them all, loud and long until he put her down.

He, too, held his hand out for Jane after hugging his daughter, but his shake was much more traditional. “Dr. Isles,” Jane said curtly, her smile still in place, but it was stilted. “Good to see you.”

“Yes, it is,” he said, and she could tell that he meant it even if their interactions were not the most warm.

This softened her to the man who had broken her wife’s heart more than once, but not enough for her to step away from Maura as they talked. “One of these days, we’re gonna get you into a regular sport like baseball,” she joked.

Arthur scoffed. “Oh but Jane, polo is a magnificent sport! The strategy required to maximize offensive output while keeping gentlemanly respect for the line of the ball… it’s artful.”

“I don’t trust any game where I couldn’t play with my best hand,” she said in response, holding up her left hand and wiggling its fingers. 

“Something tells me you’d be just as good with your right as your left,” Maura quipped. “If you would excuse me?” She bowed her head slightly to the both of them, and then followed her mother back towards the refreshments.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to taking in a baseball game with you,” Arthur said quietly. Jane had turned to survey the bright green field and he stood at her left, hands clasped behind his back as he watched along with her. His beige linen blazer fluttered in the light breeze that passed through, and Jane thought she’d never seen him dressed as casually as he was today, even in expensive khakis and light purple button-up shirt. He looked happy.

“I’d like that,” she said. “Maura’d like that, too.”

He laughed to himself. “Maura would like if we attended a baseball game? Or any sporting event for that matter?” 

Jane looked at him again, turning from the field as the mounts readied their ponies. “You’d be surprised. Maura loves baseball.” 

“Your doing, no doubt,” said Arthur, smiling at her with kind eyes. “I tried for years to get her to like sports. The only thing that ever stuck was fencing.”

Jane made a  _ blegh  _ face and he chuckled. “She still does that,” she said, “but I only led her to the dirty water. I couldn’t make her drink.”

Arthur noticed by the way that she winked at him that she was referencing something. What, however, he had no clue. “Dirty water?”

“You sure you grew up in New England? It’s a ballad about Boston. They play it at Fenway. Where we will go, now that I’ve bullied you into it,” Jane smiled back at him finally. 

“Does Elena like baseball?” He asked her. 

“Loves it. Obsessed with it, lives and breathes it. You should call her up sometime, ask her to explain it to you. I bet she’d love to. You should call up Maura, too, ask her a thing or two about scorekeeping. Somethin’ tells me you’d like it,” Jane said to him, with a closed lips half-grin. The one that said she pitied him. 

“Perhaps I will,” Arthur said. “Match is about to start. Who have you got? Newport or Hill House?”

“To be honest, I have no idea. I’ve been to three of these now, and I still don’t really get it,” Jane’s eyes darted between the two sides as they burst across the field for the first time.

“I… I could teach you, if you’d like,” Arthur offered timidly, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses higher up his nose as he regarded the woman who married his daughter.

“I don’t know, Dr. Isles,” Jane said after a pregnant pause. “I think you should teach her,” she turned toward the shade of the tent behind them and pointed to Elena. “She’s a quick learner.”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

“Ok, they must really like each other, because I’m so bored and Elena is  _ riveted _ ,” Jane said. She watched her daughter and her father-in-law sweat in the sunshine, all four of their eyes glued to the horses gliding back and forth across the field.

Maura set down her champagne glass on the high table they stood at, under the shade of their massive tent. “Polo is less about the game and more about being seen in a tent like this. He’s weird.”

Jane laughed. “Only rich people would have a sport where the point is not the sport,” she said. Her hand stayed perched just above Maura’s behind and her thumb swiped unending half-circles there.

Maura gulped when the fabric scratched lightly at her skin, catching fine hairs and sweat and therefore creating a different sensation with each touch. Jane seemed unaware of the effect she was having, her face placid behind her WayFarers while Maura breathed so closely to her cheek. Her one beer had long since been replaced by iced tea and water, and even her willingness to be designated driver for the day was sexy. 

The way Jane thought about her, without even really thinking about her, rattled Maura’s resolve, set her skin to tingling. Jane’s touch, protective and intimate in tandem, was entirely automatic. Her responsibility, the denial of her own pleasures, even when alcohol would calm her nerves, instinctual. Taking care of Maura, for Jane, was instinctual. And Maura bit her lip - it had been this way for eight and a half years of marriage. For over a decade of their relationship. “I want this to be over,” she whispered suddenly.

“Vacation? It just started,” Jane drawled absentmindedly, smiling when Elena and Arthur cheered at some unknown play. 

“No, the match,” Maura huffed. She tugged the side of Jane’s shirt so that Jane would stumble even closer into her, and she did. Maura kissed her mandibular angle. “Maybe we could convince my parents to take Elena for a convenient outing after.”

Jane whipped her head around and her eyebrows disappeared behind the curve of her sunglasses. “This is a sex thing,” she said, gesturing to the whole of Maura’s person and the way that Maura was against her. “ _ Maura.  _ We are vacationing with  _ your parents _ .”

Maura raised her right eyebrow and pursed her lips.

“No way. Not with my kid two doors down and my in-laws three,” Jane said firmly, balking only a little when Maura continued to stare. “Not in the daytime, anyway.”

“Perhaps I could be persuaded to wait. But you have to go,” Maura shrugged, stepping away from Jane completely.

“Go? Go where?” pouted Jane. 

“I don’t know, over there,” Maura said as she pointed toward her father and Elena, “just somewhere where I can forget about you for a little bit.”

Jane’s mouth gaped open for just a second or two, but then she gathered herself. “Fine. I’m going to go schmooze with your mother.”

* * *

“You know, I’m kinda glad we’re not in Boston right now. Because it’s hot as hell and we are literally a ten minute walk from the ocean,” Jane said, tugging on the steering wheel of their car and pulling away from their parking spot. 

Maura hummed in agreement. “I’m glad we’re here because it means we’re taking long overdue time off.”

“Yeah, I sorely needed some family time. Even though Elena has insisted on riding with your parents.” Jane smirked, and guided them slowly to the on ramp towards the Isles’ Rhode Island beach getaway. Even with a sea breeze, the skin on her forearms turned clammy when air conditioning hit it - droplets of sweat stopped their travel and dried while she drove.

“I think she’s fascinated by the fact that my parents are not using a car service,” Maura said. She flipped open the visor mirror and smoothed her just-applied lip gloss. 

“Not gonna lie, I’m curious as to what kind of driver your dad is, too,” said Jane. “How many miles under the speed limit does he drive?” she asked, chuckling. 

Maura smacked her hand lightly. “Ha, ha. From what I remember, he’s a very safe driver.” She couldn’t help it, her fingers lingered around Jane’s, finally lacing with them as they hung off the center console.

“It fits his… vanilla personality,” Jane commented as they exited the highway and entered a well-to-do neighborhood lined with recently repaved streets and homes three times as big as the one she grew up in. She whistled lowly. “I always forget how fancy this place is.”

“Really? It’s always felt cozy, homey to me,” Maura countered as she looked out her window at the boats docked below them. She scratched lightly at Jane’s ring finger with her thumbnail as they ascended the slope atop which her parents’ summer home sat.

“Yeah well, it’s quaint compared to the homes in Europe, I’m sure,” Jane teased. She eased the Q7 into a side driveway, away from the oceanfront view, and then cut the engine. “Shall we?”

This part of any car ride with Jane entranced Maura. Always. She nodded her readiness, but didn’t shift, only unbuckled her seatbelt as she watched Jane press the button to unlock the passenger side door. Jane always gave Maura the choice to exit the car on her own, or to be escorted out. There was gallantry in the way she unlocked it, still kind and thoughtful, but Maura always chose the other option because there was love in the way Jane opened the door for her. 

So, after exiting her seat and slamming the door shut, Jane walked around to Maura and clicked open the handle. Yes, this would always be Maura’s choice, because then she always got to put her hands on either side of Jane’s face. “Thank you for playing nice this week. I know we could be spending this time with your family, having a barbecue or going to Fenway, but I appreciate that you’re doing this for me.”

Jane smiled as wide as she could with Maura touching her. “Eh. We spend literally every other holiday with my family. I need a break. Plus, I may have convinced your dad to come to a game with us sometime.”

Maura gasped, impressed. “You did, did you? That I can’t imagine.”

“We’re gonna teach Doctor Isles a thing or two about the Sox,” said Jane, offering Maura a hand. Maura took it, stepped out, and followed Jane toward the trunk. “Well, Elena is. But we’re gonna drink beer and keep score in our favorite place while she does it.”

Maura leaned against the freshly-washed taillight of their car. Jane heaved three bags onto her shoulders and held the other in her left hand. “Well, then. Doctor Rizzoli can’t wait. Do you want help?” asked Maura, knowing the answer already.

“No,” Jane answered anyway, with a knowing wink. “Open the door for me, though?”

Maura sauntered ahead, walking straight toward the green columns of the house. “Of course.” Of course she would return the favor, a thousand times if she had to. Especially if it gave Jane the view of her backside that she had now. “Yes,” answered Maura again. 

As they encountered the winding cobblestone path to the front door, Elena bounded up to them from the other side of it. Constance Isles was not too far behind her. “You beat us!” Elena breathed out, winded from her sprint. 

“Sure did,” Jane said quietly, winking at her. “And I didn’t even have to use the bubble.”

Constance pulled her key from her  _ very  _ expensive handbag so that Maura wouldn’t have to. She opened the door and waved everyone in. “We’re just going to set some things down and freshen up, darling,” she said as Elena and Maura walked through, and then Jane. Arthur pulled a few plants from the back of their SUV, lagging behind everyone else, clearly enraptured with whatever horticultural adventure he had planned for himself. Constance caught Maura looking at him before he disappeared to the garden on the side of the home. “Once a biologist, always a biologist, it seems. He made me go with him to the nursery in town on the way to the grounds. Couldn’t help himself.”

“Well, it’s good to have something to keep him busy,” Maura said. To any outsider, it would have sounded benign, a reference to his age, but there was an understanding that passed between herself and her mother. Arthur Isles strayed when he wasn’t knee deep in a task, or research. 

“Too true,” Constance smiled gamely. She and Maura walked arm and arm into the home to the soundtrack of Rizzoli feet bounding up the stairs in stereo. Elena shrieked at the exact moment Jane apparently had caught up with her, and then their voices were muffled beyond the living room. “And it seems I’ve promised Elena ice cream, if you can believe it.”

Maura held onto Constance just a bit tighter for the way that the older woman spoiled Elena. She had worried that she would resent her mother for showing Elena the affection absent for most of her own childhood, but instead she only felt gratitude. Gratitude that it was this easy between grandmother and grandchild, that grandchild would never wonder if grandmother loved her the way that Maura wondered if Constance loved her. She laughed, half from her mother’s statement and half out of happiness. “Are you sure you weren’t strongarmed into that decision?”

“Am I sure? Definitely not. We were conversing in hushed tones in the backseat, I assumed because she didn’t want your father to hear. Now I think it may just have been so that I felt a part of her conspiracy.”

“She weaponizes intimacy,” Maura smirked, turning her face toward Constance with a glint in her eye. “It’s a family trait.”

“Well, I’ve been helplessly duped, then, Maura,” Constance laughed airily, “but I suppose I rather like it.” She stopped at the mouth of the staircase leading up to the guest bedrooms. “Send her down when she’s ready. I’m going to use the restroom and then we’ll collect Doctor Isles and go.”

Maura blushed when she realized just exactly what her mother’s statement would mean.

* * *

Maura had done as told, been dutiful, sent Elena downstairs to find Constance. They had yelled their goodbyes and told Maura they would lock up, and then Maura had raced back into the bedroom she and Jane would share for the next week. 

Her heart thundered in her ears. She took the reprieve of Jane occupying the ensuite in order to smooth out the front of her dress and check her wedges for scuff marks. 

Then she scoffed. Straighten her clothes? Was she daft? Any time that she wasn’t removing them was time wasted. She regrouped and started with the buckle on her heels, hooked the back straps in the first two fingers of her right hand, and then dropped the shoes at the bottom of their closet. She stayed in it to untie the sash of her dress, just to her left side, fine motor skills still deft despite her sudden excitement.

Jane emerged, already talking. “I don’t think I’ve ever peed in a toilet that nice,” she said, stopping short when Maura turned to her, in only the skimpiest of lingerie. “Uh.”

“My parents have taken Elena out for ice cream. We’re alone,” Maura explained breathily. “We can be bad.”

“All alone?” Jane asked, walking forward with her hands already out to touch.

“All alone,” reiterated Maura. 

“How bad?” Jane’s next question was more foreplay than permission-seeking as she exhaled it against Maura’s lips.

They kissed with passion, dotting the air with wet sounds too raunchy to be considered kisses alone. They sounded instead like a prelude with their soft smack and Maura’s whimpers. “You know what the summer does to us. What it’s always done to us,” she said as her reply, and a highlight reel of sweaty sessions in a multitude of arenas accosted them both. “And we have all of last summer to make up for.”

“Makes us sloppy and loud. We take forever in the summer. Maybe it should wait,” said Jane, though they both knew she didn’t mean it. She was already unbuttoning her shirt while Maura tore away at her khakis’ zipper. 

“Well make it quick now and we can pick it up again tonight, Jane,” Maura said, annoyed. 

“Yes ma’am,” Jane chuckled as she finally divested herself of her pants. Then she yelped when she was pulled into another kiss, this one no prelude, but rather act one, in the way that Maura invaded her mouth with that talented tongue. 

As soon as it had started, however, it was done, and Maura dropped her Louis Vuitton duffle onto the duvet. It landed heavily enough to expel a whoosh of air right at Jane’s now exposed and very overheated thigh. “I brought us something.”

Jane looked over at the luggage and gulped.  _ So sloppy _ .

* * *

Arthur Isles had waved to his wife and his granddaughter as they pulled out of the gravel roundabout in front of their home, making indigestion his excuse for skipping out on their ice cream date. It was easier, he thought, than explaining that he was simply too wrapped up in the  _ centranthus ruber _ he was planting to stop now. He made Elena promise him to come back to the garden when they returned, so that he could tell her all about the growth of its star shaped flowers and its attractiveness to butterflies (her favorite insect, he now knew after their long entomology talks). She had agreed, and he had been very pleased. He worked double time to situate them next to their more fully grown counterparts, sweat on his head ameliorated by the wind wafting in from the ocean. 

If he stayed much longer on his knees, however, he was going to regret it in the morning, and though he had gotten out of this impromptu excursion, he would not be able to excuse himself from his wife’s fundraising event down at the docks tomorrow. He’d need to go inside soon to grab his kneeling mat. A glass of wine from the upstairs kitchen didn’t sound too shabby, either, and he figured he had just enough time to enjoy that before Elena returned to study the flowers with him.

* * *

Maura, now entirely naked in disarranged bed clothes, clawed at Jane’s back as they made love. She groaned in frustration when she couldn’t find any traction against the sweat peppering Jane’s shoulders, but she also groaned in lust at the sensation of Jane sucking lazily at the skin over her carotid and the sensation of Jane filling her up between her legs. It was  _ complicated _ .

They moved together heavily and quickly. Maura looked over Jane’s shoulder to watch her ass undulate in their set rhythm, the only part of either of them covered by a sheet. She felt each forward push - a sinful pressure that skyrocketed her pulse; she elongated each outward drag with the way she held Jane inside, squeezed her to accentuate the friction. The combination of movements was always enough to drive Jane wild, and now was no different as she hurried her thrusts, anxious to start the delicious process all over again. 

Desperate to find some way of touching Jane with her hands, Maura pulled her face upward and kissed her. When they broke, the resulting breath against Jane’s cheek from open, rounded lips sounded like a whine. “Already?” Maura bemoaned the tightening of herself around the toy they shared; the wet click with each rocking motion betrayed how close she was to the edge.

“You said make it quick,” Jane said in Maura’s ear as she gripped the edge of the mattress for support. She cast her eyes forward and felt a rush of heat between her own legs when she saw the door halfway ajar. There certainly was something about fucking with the door open - she imagined it was because they hadn’t really been able to since before Elena was born. “And  _ someone  _ left the door wide open so I gotta use all the tricks in the book… in case they come back.”

Maura lolled her head backwards and saw what Jane saw, just upside down. She felt so good that she couldn’t be bothered to care. “But what about you?” she managed through a moan, her voice racing higher in pitch when Jane altered the angle, slowed down the pace, and deepened the plunge. 

Jane smiled, lifted herself on one elbow so that she could see Maura’s face. Their shoulders and their chests separated, and the sticky feeling on her skin from the new open air made Maura even hotter. “You give me mine right after I give you yours, ok? I promise I’m not far behind,” said Jane.

“Yes…” Maura gasped in crescendo. She was entering the nonsensical phase of their union, always louder in the months of the year when New England heat ignited the both of them. Jane’s words were all the encouragement Maura needed. She wrapped her arms around Jane’s shoulders, spread her knees wide, and crossed her ankles right at the small of Jane’s back. They were  _ so close _ , and Jane smelled like Tropicana sun lotion and the ocean, and Jane was using that stroke she liked, and Jane had given up her week of freedom in the summer to vacation with Maura’s family, and Jane was letting Maura exhale sharp, staccato breaths in her ear…

It was an amalgam of the little things that brought Maura to her orgasm, the little Jane things that divested her of reason and imbued her with a most feminine of wants. Jane’s scent, her devotion, filled every space that had been left open in Maura before they had found one another. And just after Maura was sure that she would never see those holes repaired, Jane had patched them all: fixed every leak, even the ones she caused, all while breaking her back in bed. Maura’s eyes slammed shut as the dopamine washed over her brain and Jane eased into a slow grind that made her feel like she was melting onto the springs of the mattress. “Oh,  _ daddy… _ ” she sobbed, long and loud and high as she came, arms hooked under Jane’s own as she wove her fingers into Jane’s curly black hair.

* * *

Arthur had been swirling his half-consumed wine at the kitchen counter upstairs, attempting to release a little more of its tannins, when he heard it. Words not truly discernable, no, but sounding distinctly like distress and in need of fatherly attention. How he knew this, he wasn’t sure, but he hadn’t always been the best at showing Maura he cared in the past, and he was making a concerted effort to try.

So, he set the glass down, an elegant clatter against the granite countertop, and made his way toward the end of the hall where he thought he heard his daughter’s voice. He hoped she needed something simple, like a lightbulb change or the reference for a line of poetry she couldn’t remember the origins of. Those things he could supply. 

“Maura,” he called out as he got closer, “everything alright? I thought I heard - Oh my god.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always been fascinated by Maura's relationship with her adoptive parents and their relationship with each other. She really should have talked to them more about everything that went down when she was little. That would have been great television.

Maura finally opened her eyelids, but her vision was blotchy enough that at first she didn’t realize what she was seeing in the doorway. Combine that with the upside down image, and it took a few milliseconds longer than normal for her brain to process that it was indeed her  _ father _ standing at the threshold, pale as a ghost, frozen to his spot. 

Oh, my god. Oh my  _ fucking  _ god. 

Jane verbalized what Maura had been thinking. “Oh my god!” she exclaimed as she somehow reached behind herself to pull the sheet up over her and Maura without exposing any more of them than already was exposed. 

Maura was not as kind. “Get out!” she snapped, her cheeks red. “Get out!” 

Arthur didn’t wait for the rest of the second  _ get out  _ before he jumped, disappeared down the hall, presumably to have his heart attack in peace. 

Once Jane was sure that he had left, she propped herself up again to look at Maura. Only, she couldn’t, because both of Maura’s hands had flown to cover her face as soon as the coast was clear.

“Oh my god,” Maura said, finally joining the chorus of the others out loud. “Oh my  _ god _ .”

Jane frowned, feeling a little helpless. “That was…”

“Mortifying,” Maura nearly cried, rubbing her hands vigorously over her eyes.

“Yeah. Want me to go talk to him?” Jane asked her, nuzzling the space between the heels of Maura’s hands with her nose. 

“God no,” said Maura. She finally revealed herself to Jane again and she was embarrassed and angry. “I’m not going to make you talk my father down from walking in on us. At the  _ worst  _ possible moment. I’ll do it. He was supposed to be out!”

Jane grimaced with one eye open. “He heard you say…”

“I  _ know _ ,” Maura covered her eyes again and huffed. Jane slid off of her and laid on her back so that they were shoulder to shoulder, heads at the foot of the bed. 

“You haven’t called me that since before-”

“Everything with Elena last year,” Maura finished for her.

“Yeah. What a time to start up again,” Jane couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped now that the moment had passed. “Whoops.”

Maura turned her head to her left to see that Jane was already smiling back at her. Openly and crookedly. She loved the juxtaposition of the white of Jane’s teeth against the tan of her summer face. Almost enough to forget what they were talking about. Almost. “And after today I will definitely not be calling you that for a long time. If I can help it - it already just slips out.”

“That’s too bad. I kinda like it,” Jane said. “In this very specific context.”

“How fucking  _ embarrassing,  _ Jane,” Maura rolled her whole body over, smashing her face into her wife’s shoulder dramatically and huffing out a shaky breath.

Jane kissed her forehead and laughed again. “Well, you could go the catholic route and never speak of this again. He seems to like that option.”

Maura was silent, as though she really, truly considered it, but then shook her head. “No. I’ll go now. I can’t have it hanging over this entire trip.” She rose to her feet, shutting the door hastily as she rummaged through her garment bag for an appropriate dress. _Was_ there an appropriate dress for talking to her father about what he had just seen his only daughter, only child doing? She guessed she was about to find out.

“Got a nun’s habit in there?” Jane teased. She pulled the sheet tighter against her naked chest, tucked tightly under her arms, and stretched her legs under it. “Because that’s what I’d want to wear right about now.”

Maura rolled her eyes. “No. But I am going to put on the most unflattering underwear I packed,” she said. “Which is not very unflattering, mind you, considering this is mainly what I wanted to do with our time.”

Jane’s eyes softened as she watched Maura pull on her favorite pair of functional black hipsters. “You sure you don’t want me to do it?”

Maura smiled for the first time. Then she sighed. Once she had her bra on, she said, “do you know how I know that you love me?”

“How’s that?” Jane asked indulgently, batting her eyelashes in Maura’s direction.

“You are offering to talk to my father about something extremely awkward, involving sex, for me. Instead of running and screaming in the other direction.”

“You’re right. I sure must love you a whole hell of a lot,” said Jane, sitting up and scratching the back of her head. The sheet dropped to her lap and her feet planted firmly on the floor because of the low bed. Maura thought she looked like stability, like strength. She needed some of that. “Now you should probably go out there before our kid comes waltzing through the door. She’ll know something’s up with him as soon as she sees him.”

* * *

Maura smoothed the front of her flowy, sleeveless dress, much more conservative in neckline and slit than her first of the day, and let out a tumultuous breath before knocking on the door of the place she knew she would find her father. In every home they owned, he had a study. Each one was unique, all filled with wall-to-wall books, with different preserved specimens of all sorts mounted and displayed on tables and shelves. 

And no two books were the same. They both read voraciously when she was a child, and it was one of the few hobbies they ever had in common. Before his affair, before she had caught him with Mrs. Jacquard, Maura retreated from the world with him in those rooms. They would spend hours together, not talking, while they brushed up on Elizabethan drama, or devoured the latest research on artificial heart valves. After his affair, he would hide from her in every study, locking himself within. Locking her out. He would hide himself from what he did to her, from the way he had asked her to lie for him, and he would hide from the desperate looks of abandonment on her face every time they were in a space together.

He had even sent her away. Or at least, he didn’t try to stop her from going when she applied to boarding school. He barely spoke to her. So now, when he tried the same thing, tried to run from his shame, she refused to let him. She knocked, yes, but then swiftly entered, not giving him the chance to deny her. 

She had grown bold since their watershed discussion just after Elena’s birth.

“Dad,” she said as she pushed into the room. She was quiet and she hated the way that word sounded coming out of her mouth for him. She hated that it made it sound like he had been a father to her. She waited a few more seconds to see if he would acknowledge her, but he did not. “I’m sorry,” she tried again, “I… you shouldn’t have seen that.”

He had his back to her and he was perusing the titles on one of the bookshelves against the wall closest to the window. He shrugged. “Things happen. It’s not… a big deal.” The words sounded nice, placating, but he still would not look at her.

Maura’s temper flickered, small but ready to grow, when he continued his fake interest in something else. “Would you turn around, please?” 

He tapped a nearby Grecian bust with his hand three times, softly. Then he did turn. “I mean it, truly. It’s not a big deal.”

“I should have had the door closed. This is your home, not mine,” Maura powered through anyway. She forced him to confront what he was clearly trying to avoid. She felt him slipping through her grasp, so she tightened it. “I don’t want it to color our time together.”

He chuckled, removed his glasses, and plopped rather ungracefully into his leather office chair. He drummed his fingers on his desk and smiled, looking relieved, but also as if he were searching for just the right words. “Maura, you’re an adult, I’m an adult, we are under no illusion about what it is that adults do.  _ Of course _ we can put this all behind us. Since I suppose that we’re even now.”

He didn’t find them. Maura’s face, all of its features, came forward in a hot mixture of anger and hurt. “I’m sorry, how are we even?”

Arthur at once thought he missed a memo somewhere. “You know, you walked in on me, and now the tables have turned, and I’ve, well, walked in on you. We should be square,” he reasoned, still smiling, his tone still light. His only sign of distress was the kerchief he kept touching to his forehead.

Maura took one long, lung-ballooning breath. Her mouth opened up to scream, but somehow she choked it before it rang out. “That,” she said instead, pointing out the open door and down the hall, “that is not  _ remotely  _ the same. That is my  _ wife _ . That’s the person, the only person on this earth, that I should get caught having sex with.”

“Maura -”

“No, I’m not finished. When I said I didn’t want it to color our time together, I meant your time with my daughter. Our time, the relationship between us,” she stepped forward, flipping her index finger between the two of them, “will always be colored by what you did. You made me lie for you, you had an affair. You were unfaithful to my mother. What I walked in on all those years ago was the exact opposite of what you just saw.”

Arthur sighed in confusion. “I don’t understand. I thought we had moved past this.”

Maura scoffed. “Me too. But what you just said proves to me that you don’t get it  _ at all _ . That you’ve never understood why I was so hurt, and that you have no interest in understanding it. Do you know how hard I had to fight the past year to keep my marriage afloat? Jane nearly sank it with her stupidity. But even then, in the direst of circumstances, when I thought we’d never find our way back, she was a far better spouse than you. She would never even  _ think  _ of cheating on me. So please, don’t compare the two again. They are not the same.”

“I am sorry,” Arthur said. He placed his kerchief back in his breast pocket. He regarded her, standing ramrod straight in front of his desk, her hands clasped together at the level of her hips. He saw Constance in Maura’s regality. Flashes of the dignified scolding he received from his wife about his affair with Mrs. Jacquard came back to him. “I’ve told you that doing that to you was my… my biggest regret. You have to know that I don’t see your marriage as the same as… my indiscretion.”

Just before Maura could reply, they heard the front door swing open. Elena’s voice called out for her from down below. “That’s good. Please don’t shut her out today,” Maura said. She gulped, cocked her head just slightly to the side, willing away the urge to cry. Her voice cracked anyway. “Don’t do to her what you used to do to me. Don’t hide from her in here, because of something I did.”

Arthur looked down at the top of his desk in shame. He nodded glumly, his own tears threatening to fall against the antique wood grain. “I won’t. Of course I won’t.”

Maura nodded once. Never had his word been good enough to trust, but she would have to let it be for now. As she walked out, a title on one of the shelves just by the door caught her eye. “ _ Le Rouge et le Noir, _ ” she said as she tapped on its spine, pulled it away. “I’d forgotten about it.”

“A 19th century classic,” Arthur said, smiling cautiously even though she couldn’t see him. “And always one of your favorites.”

“Mmm,” Maura hummed in mild agreeability. She remembered him reading passages of it to her when she was a girl, around 12 or 13, the time in her life when she had worshipped him. He would never be that man again, not to her. But, he could be to Elena, and so she offered him the most tenuous of truces. “I’ll take it for bedtime tonight,” she said, looking back at him, “maybe we can debate it like we did back then, after I’ve finished.”

“I would like that,” he said, crossing his fingers over his protruding belly. “I would like that very much.”

Maura knew he watched her, unsure of where they stood, but she couldn’t worry about that. She couldn’t fix it for him.

* * *

The clang of nautical safety bells carried into the Rizzoli bedroom well past ten PM, along with the soft whistle of a nighttime breeze, right through an open window. Walls of seafoam green looked sallow in the lamplight from just by the bed, and the unused fireplace creaked with the house’s age and the constant battery of salt air. 

In short, it was late by the beach, and the Isles’ vacation home sounded finally, peacefully quiet. There was the occasional creaking door as someone ventured to the restroom, or a periodic holler as tourists returned to their rentals, invigorated by life away from life, but for the most part there was stillness. 

Even Jane didn’t move, lying next to Maura on the bed. She had transferred from one awkward situation to another that evening, first with Arthur’s accidental walk-in, and then with having to stuff herself into a form fitting black dress and heels for their fancy dinner at The Mooring - a fresh-catch seafood restaurant known for elegant eating and the affluent guests who dined there. That second one Maura had sprung on her, held the dress up with a shimmy and hopeful eyes, and Jane had very begrudgingly put it on. Elena had laughed and laughed as Jane grumbled and rubbed her red ankles at the table. She had even said she was going to ditch them all for the Newport Lobster Shack down the street when their food was taking an inordinately long time, but then rallied when it came out and had been the best fish she’d ever tasted. The whirlwind of events, good and bad, had exhausted her.

Now, though, she was the picture of serenity, and looking much more herself. She slept on her stomach, on top of the covers, no shirt on and breathing heavily into the pillow she had her arms circled around. In fact, the only thing she wore were black Nike compression shorts, the hallmark swoosh tattooed just a few centimeters higher than mid-thigh on the hem. 

She was quintessential Rizzoli with her wild hair splayed against her pillow, one foot close to dangling off the bed, and her sportswear. Eight hours or so into this vacation, and Maura already needed that. She needed the comfort that Rizzoli-ness brought her. She shifted under the covers as she read, and she put her hand flat on Jane’s back to feel her ribs expand and contract with breath. Another sign of Rizzoli life to temper the anxiety that came with Isles engagements. Her other hand held her book open for her, but she had stopped reading when the warmth of Jane’s skin spread out against her palm. It calmed her. 

Jane didn’t stir, she never did when Maura did this. She also didn’t stir when Elena, wiping sleepily at her eyes, appeared in the open doorway, calling out softly. “Mom?”

Maura looked up and smirked. She figured this might happen. “Can’t sleep?”

“Uh-uh,” The girl said, resembling Jane with her hair poking out every which way and her long limbs swaying as she walked into her parents’ room.

“You’ve never been able to in a brand new place,” Maura said, patting the empty space on the other side of her. She scooted closer to Jane’s side to make room, mindful of the elbow now just behind her back, and pulled back the covers. “Come here.”

Elena obeyed, curling into Maura and throwing an arm around her midsection as they lounged together. “What are you reading?” she asked behind a yawn.

Maura chuckled at the display. “It’s called  _ The Red and the Black _ . It’s a French novel about a man who is born in a lower class home, and how he attempts to better his station in life by working. And deceiving other people.”

“Deceiving?”

“Lying. For his own gain. He ends up doing some very bad things before he dies at the end,” Maura replied.

Elena shrugged, clearly uninterested. “He sounds like a bad person.”

Maura nodded. “Maybe he is,” she said, closing the book and setting it on her lap. She wrapped her arms around Elena’s shoulders. “Maybe society’s made him the way he is, or created the circumstances that make his choices necessary. Were you restless? Having bad dreams?”

“Restless,” Elena answered. “Kicking around.”

“Your mother does that, too, sometimes. Stress,” Maura supplied, placing a kiss to the crown of Elena Giuliana’s head. 

“But she’s dead asleep right now,” Elena replied, and Maura thought she heard a hint of jealousy in it.

“Well, she had a long day. She started work very early this morning.”

“I had a long day, too,” Elena sighed.

“I suppose you’re right,” Maura laughed. “I suppose we all did.” They sat there for a few moments, listening to the bells and the wind and each other’s breathing, until Elena began to get heavy and still. 

Just as Maura was about to carry her to bed, the only person who hadn’t wandered into their room that evening, Constance Isles, appeared at the threshold in a long satin nightgown and robe. They were the counterpart to Maura’s short ones, Constance’s clothes powder blue and Maura’s a creamy peach accented with black lace. Before Constance even spoke, Maura knew that this was the parent she most resembled, out of her four. She looked exactly like Hope, yes, but she  _ was  _ like Constance. 

“I just stopped by her room to check on her,” Constance said, nodding to Elena. “I had heard tossing and turning, but I suppose she’s found her own remedy.”

Maura smiled warmly at her mother, tossed a glance Jane’s way to make sure she still was on her stomach and not exposed. Two mishaps in one night would have been unbearable, especially when they had left the door open in a show of transparency. “Thank you. For checking on her. Are you sleeping now?”

Constance was a notorious night owl. Long after others went to sleep, she got up to all sorts of things. “No, not for awhile. I’ve actually been working on a series of paintings, doing a little each time we come here. It’s been years, but I finally think I am making progress. The past few nights have been rather productive.”

“I’d love to see them,” Maura said earnestly. “When you’re ready to show them.”

Constance, not one for spontaneity, surprised Maura with her next statement. “You may see them now, if you’d like.” She nodded her head toward the staircase, the painting room tucked away downstairs. 

“Are you sure? I know how… sacred the process is. I don’t want to-”

“Nonsense. You’re my daughter, not a gallery. There’s no harm in letting you peek behind the curtain, so to speak.”

Maura wasted no time. She plucked Elena from her side as gracefully as she could, leaving the girl to roll over towards Jane in Maura’s absence. She left the lamp on for them, though she wasn’t sure why, given how much they preferred darkness over light when they slept, and then followed her mother down the hall. She cinched her robe tighter around her just before they entered the small room, seeing Constance do the same. 

The smell of oils hit Maura the instant the door opened. It transported her to her childhood, her sneaking about, trying to glimpse what Constance kept so guarded from everyone around her until she was sure that her works were ready. 

Maura’s parents had many secrets, she realized. Many things they wanted to keep from her. Or, many things they  _ had  _ wanted to keep from her. As she entered the second parental vestibule of the day, she admitted that maybe they were done hiding. 

And that’s when she finally noticed the four paintings on different easels throughout the room. There were postmodern streaks of red and blue against canvas, notes of shame and sadness. But there were also lively greens and bold yellows among them, shocks of happiness. The last one, clearly a little older than the rest, used hollow grays, whites, and blacks. Somehow, it sucked the serotonin out of her and she saw the contours of Constance’s depression. It was the most emotion from her mother that she had ever felt. And Constance said not a word. “Mom, these are…” she trailed off, still amazed, and she tapped her lips with her fingertips.

“Unfinished?” Constance offered demurely. “I feel like when they are done, they’ll be quite something, though.”

“They’re quite something now,” Maura said, leaning forward to study the broad lines of black that cut through white. “I feel this one. The interplay between the nothingness of what we consider normal, and the heaviness of mourning, of depression… it’s messing with my brain chemistry.”

Constance came up next to her. She folded her hands behind her back and smirked. “You’ve lived this one.”

Maura stood up straight again, still scrutinizing it. “Yes.”

“Me too.”

Maura said nothing. 

“Your father told me, you know. That you knew. About Delphine. Our neighbor,” Constance tried again. “He told me after you two had that big fight a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you,” Maura whispered, and now she was the one who refused to look at the person so wanting to communicate with her. “I didn’t want you to leave.”

Constance nodded. “It’s how we raised you. To think always about the outcome any decision may have on how you seem to people. To think about how what you’re doing might have unintended consequences.”

“Most of the time, it made me judicious,” Maura said a little bitterly, but she smiled when she dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. 

“It made you small,” Constance lamented. “It made you so afraid of making me unhappy that it made you despondent. It is no-one’s fault but mine and your father’s that you didn’t tell me. You shrank away in hopes that your secret, his secret, wouldn’t undo the only family you had.”

Maura let the tears fall now, as there were too many to catch, but she kept her face otherwise serene as she listened. She didn’t trust herself to reply. 

“That was wrong of us, Maura. As parents and as people. I’ve told you before that we were never any good at it. We were academics in love that stumbled into parenthood completely by chance. But that’s not an excuse. Not a very good one, anyway,” Constance continued.

“We do the best we can at the time,” Maura said kindly. “And then we do better.”

“You are lightyears ahead of where I was at your age. You found this… thing that woke you up, consumed you, burned you alive. And now, I count myself lucky to be able to breathe in the smoke of it. Elena.”

“She really is extraordinary. I don’t know where she came from, how she got this way, but I am ecstatic that she’s mine.”

“She came from what you and Jane have built, my darling. That much is obvious. The two of you are the most…  _ begetting  _ pair of lovers I’ve encountered.” When Maura finally turned to her mother in confusion, Constance elaborated. “Even when you are tearing each other asunder, you are creating. And the result is always something astounding to watch.”

Maura wasn’t sure she had heard this many compliments from her mother in her lifetime, let alone in one sitting. She could only nod dumbly.

“Your father told me about what happened this afternoon, too,” Constance said.

Maura suddenly found words, and a furious blush. “You two definitely talk to each other a lot more often than when I was growing up.”

Constance shrugged. “When you get older, you realize obfuscation isn’t worth it if you love someone.”

“Well, this afternoon was absolutely mortifying,” said Maura, shaking her head.

“I meant, he told me what he said to you,” Constance said. She looked ahead, not at the painting but at some safe space beyond it. “And even though he was so contrite when he told me, I want you to know that I don’t think he truly understands.”

“Why I was mad?”

“Why you were hurt by what he said. This is the curse of living with a man.”

“You did always say that men are incapable of understanding all the ways they hurt women.”

“I still say it. He doesn’t understand, though he says he does, why his fleeting sexual relationship with the woman next door does not equate with the lifetime you have built with Jane. To men, all sexual relationships are the same. They are transactional. This is what men have been brought up to believe. And maybe for them it’s true,” Constance showed a wisp of emotion then, as though Arthur’s affair of nearly forty years ago were just yesterday.

Maura put her hand on her mother’s arm. “I have to admit that I never asked myself how you felt. How it all made you feel. I was honestly too busy trying not to have a meltdown.”

“You were surviving. But you need to know that I see you. Even if he doesn’t. And it’s not malicious - it’s not that he doesn’t try or doesn’t love you. But you and I have both known betrayal. The only difference between us is that Jane was humble enough to know that she could lose you. Your father takes a great many things for granted,” Constance sniffled. She put her aging hands on Maura’s shoulders and squeezed as tightly as she could. “I gave myself back to him despite all that because I knew it would hurt  _ me _ too much to lose  _ him _ .”

“Hmm,” Maura accepted her mother’s statement and breathed in deeply. There was no agreement, nor any judgment. There were only the words.

“That’s enough heaviness for one night, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be on vacation. Come now. Tell me what you think about the rest,” Constance prodded. She kept her hands where they were and shepherded Maura to another painting across the room.


	4. Chapter 4

Jane, still a little winded from her morning run, sniffed her left armpit just to make triple sure she didn’t smell. Being near the ocean helped, but even at eight in the morning, she poured sweat in the summer sunlight. When all she got was a whiff of  _ Shower Fresh _ and her fabric softener, she was satisfied. With the morning’s edition of the Globe under her other arm, she unzipped the tiny compartment in the front of her running shorts just large enough for a house key, and pulled out the one Maura had leant her. 

The smell of coffeehouse-grade espresso hit her as soon as she entered the home, and then her lubricated muscles took her two stairs at a time to the kitchen. She walked by the large table, where her daughter sat facing away from the mouth of the staircase, and tapped her on the shoulder. When Elena looked to her left to see no-one, she whipped to the right and Jane winked at her, having been caught. “Pancakes, huh? Yum.”

“Grandma made them. Well, me and Grandpa helped,” Elena said around a mouthful of fluff and blueberry drenched in syrup. Sure enough, Grandpa sat next to her with a little bit of pancake batter streaked on the shoulder of his short-sleeve button up shirt, and he shared a timid smile with Jane. “Have some!” Elena encouraged her mother, unaware of the tension of the day before.

Jane had ventured into the kitchen proper instead, where she set her newspaper down on the counter. She patted Maura’s hip lightly as she passed, but her true destination was Constance, already dressed to the nines in a very nautically-appropriate red slacks and navy blazer. “I gotta get some of your famous espresso first,” she said as they kissed each other once on each cheek, very un-Jane, but a gesture she had not minded adopting for her mother-in-law. Constance was already holding a tiny cup up for her when they broke apart, and Jane plucked it away with her thumb and her index finger hastily. She moaned and threw her head back as the first sip slid down her throat. “God that’s good,” she whispered. “It’s been too long.”

Maura, dressed similarly to her mother, in her own style, kicked back at Jane’s calf with her bare foot. “You act like you don’t get espresso every weekend at home,” she teased.

“Oh, Maura. Not like this,” Jane retorted. She took the small plate offered to her for her cup and walked back out to the open dining area, picking up her paper and smacking the top of Elena’s head with it playfully as she sat. “I’m going to need at least a couple more this morning.”

Constance laughed aloud. “You’ll be up all night!” 

“Don’t be so sure,” Maura warned as she measured sugar to toss into her bowl of sliced strawberries. It was a luxury she allowed herself only ever so often. “Caffeine addiction. She’d crash just after lunch.”

Jane made a show of covering her face with the Metro page. Elena giggled. 

“We get the local paper and The Times delivered, Jane, you didn’t have to forage for your own,” said Constance as she turned back to her priceless espresso machine to work on her own serving. 

“I appreciate that. But the Globe has the most exhaustive game recaps,” Jane said honestly as she sipped her coffee. “And I needed to go into town anyway.”

“And why is that?” Maura asked her, setting a plate in front of her with breakfast on it. She settled into her own seat next to Jane.

“Well, Giuliana Ballgame and I had a discussion this morning,” she said with a shrug.

“Oh you did? About what?” Maura wanted to seem annoyed, she did, but she was too enamored with the way the two of them conspired. 

“We’re gonna teach Grandpa about baseball!” Elena, unable to contain herself, shouted. “Today!”

Jane flashed Maura a guilty smirk. “Well, you guys don’t have a TV. Which would make it pretty hard to watch the game here, so I asked the guy at the newsstand where  _ might  _ be the best place to do that. At first he raved about this Sox bar a few blocks down, but I told him it would be a family affair. Turns out there’s this restaurant with a nice outside deck that’s got TVs aplenty.”

“We got creamed yesterday. Angels whooped our butts and Mike Trout didn’t even have an RBI,” Elena turned excitedly to her grandfather, as though that explained everything. “And today’s the rubber match.”

Arthur gaped at the two of them, clearly surprised. “Jane, I…”

“She means we lost pretty badly last night and today’s our chance to take two out of the three games in this series. So, here’s what’s gonna happen: this afternoon, you, me, and her are gonna have a nice al fresco lunch at uh, Graziano’s, I think it was called. Your daughter and your wife can even join us if they want. And while we’re there, Elena’s gonna tell you anything you could ever want to know about baseball,” explained Jane. She took a hefty bite of pancakes and raised her eyebrows in that way that was kind, but also said  _ there’s no negotiating this _ .

Arthur set his fork down with a grace that could only have been from years of practice. It didn’t even clatter. He wanted so badly to reach for the olive branch that Jane was offering him. He knew the power it held, the power to obliterate all the hard feelings and shame of the day before. He looked at Elena, her eyes so alive and so  _ expectant _ , and he wanted nothing more than to fulfill all of her expectations. Then he looked to Maura, afraid of crumbling under the pressure of her young daughter’s hope. “Your mother has her fundraiser,” he said.

“In about two and a half hours,” replied Maura, looking at her watch. “Sunday games are at 1:35. Should you accept, there will be plenty of time to join them."   


“Plenty of time. We’re gonna rent some bikes out by the pier while the three of you have the time of your lives at your adults-only fundraiser,” Jane paused for effect, “and then you’re gonna meet us at the restaurant. We’ll need a ride home.”

Maura watched the silent interaction between her wife and her father. He squeezed and flexed his hands, his nervous habit, and Jane said nothing in order to give him some space. She held his gaze the entire time, however, unwilling to let him scurry too far. 

Jane’s plot struck Maura then; it was pointed and effective, judging by the way Arthur was unable to outright deny her. And it had been concocted between her and a seven year-old, nonetheless. Apparently in the snuggle time they had taken while Maura was in the shower, when Jane had looked half asleep and Elena had backed up against her looking like her twin. Maura had thought they were in that twilight place between dreams and the responsibility of waking, but Jane must have whispered in their daughters ear while holding her in her arms, and Elena must have whispered back.  _ Classic Rizzoli sneak _ . Jane had offered to talk Arthur down the day before, and Maura had declined in order to spare her the embarrassment, but clearly that’s what Jane was doing now. She was reaching out to him, fixing this mess, moving him with leverage Maura had never thought to use. The thought placed Maura’s hand on Jane’s warm thigh - she rubbed with affection and soothed with pride.

Constance, espresso in hand, took her place at the head of the table. She stared at Arthur pointedly. “I think that sounds like a wonderful idea,” she said just as she pressed the lip of her cup to her mouth. “Don’t the matches last several hours? Even if you have to take a cab while Maura and I finish up at the Cliffside, we would be able to join you long before it was over.”

Jane refrained from patting Constance’s wrist, settling for more subtle a wink instead, a muted  _ thank you _ . “They’re called games, but yeah. Around three if we’re lucky,” she said. 

Arthur, after receiving his wife’s blessing, let out a breath he had been stymying. He even chuckled. “Well, alright then. Graziano’s it is. Will I have to learn who this Mike Trout fellow is?”

Maura opened her eyes wide at her father and clamped her lips shut, shaking her head slowly. Jane put her hand up to her mouth to shield it from Elena and mouthed something unreadable.

They were both too late.

“You don’t know who Mike Trout is?” Elena shouted and whipped her head toward her grandfather. Her prominent eyebrows flew up in disbelief and the corners of her Sicilian mouth dragged down in disappointment.

“That’s Elena’s man,” Jane said teasingly. “Even though he doesn’t play for us,” she lamented, and then turned to her daughter. “Remember what I told you? You can’t assume he knows anything, and you can’t get disappointed when he doesn’t.”

Arthur took the hint and the arrow to his heart gamely. “So he’s not a Sox fellow, then?” he asked, leaning forward so that he could make his face level with Elena’s.

She sighed, took her mother’s advice. “No. But he’s the best player on the planet. And I only don’t root for him when he plays the Red Sox.”

“The best player on the entire planet, huh? That’s quite something. What makes him the best?”

At the question, Elena shot up from her pancakes. “I can show you! Let me get my tablet! Uh,” she stammered at the end, no less excited, but tempered by the rules of etiquette that she suddenly remembered. She looked painfully at Maura, as though she were going to burst.

Maura chuckled, and nodded to her once. That was all she needed to run toward the hall.

Constance cleared Elena’s plate from the table and approached her husband. “You should follow her,” she said quietly, before turning toward the kitchen to tidy. Arthur excused himself with a wipe of his napkin against his beard and a small grin. 

This left Jane and Maura alone at the table. “I’m glad you only use your powers for good,” Maura said. She came forward and kissed Jane’s sweaty temple. 

“What powers are those? I’m just drinking your mother’s crack coffee and enjoying blueberry pancakes, trying not to sweat through her antique furniture,” Jane replied innocently. Her only tell was the sparkle in her eye, accentuated by the Rhode Island sun coming through the expansive dining room window.

“Your powers of persuasion,” said Maura. “You played him like a fiddle. Thank you, by the way. For smoothing everything over.”

Jane’s face turned serious and she shrugged. “It’s weird. Usually you’re the diplomat, you know? And I’m the bull in the china shop. But with him… you two butt heads. So, powers of persuasion it is. Sometimes I can be subtle.”

“Hmm,” Maura hummed through a closed mouth chuckle, “Not quite. But it got your point across.”

“Maybe it’s just because I’m so irresistible,” Jane retorted. 

“I happen to think so,” Maura said, “whatever the reason, I’m happy you did it. No matter how torturous this afternoon is going to be for him, it’s going to make the rest of this trip so much more bearable.”

“Elena and I get to watch the game and you don’t wring your dad’s neck. Win win.” Jane swooped in to kiss Maura then, but all she got was a hand pushing gently against her chest and Maura’s lips just shy of hers. “What?” she groaned. “Do I smell? I checked outside.”

“You have to know how much I appreciate this, Jane,” Maura said. She made sure to hold Jane close with her gaze.

“You’re welcome,” Jane said with a smile and tried to lean in again.

There was another push. “You’re beautiful, kind, an amazing parent.”

“That makes two of us,” said Jane, blushing, waiting for the rest.

“You’re sinister, too, with your scheming,” Maura said, winking at her, “and you’re all mine. That’s the best part.” Then, she finally relinquished and let Jane kiss her softly. She splayed her fingers against sharp Italian features, thumbs swiping across cheekbones and eye orbits, just before she tugged on Jane’s lower lip with her teeth. She released it with a sensual pop just as Jane spread her arm over the back of Maura’s chair to bring them closer. 

“Well in a house of three doctors, I have to bring somethin’ to the table.” Jane sighed into their embrace, enjoying the nuanced pressure of thumb pads over her closed eyes. 

“Two PhDs and an MD, yes, but we’re all quite taken with you,” Maura said. They paused for a while, letting twin laughter from Elena’s room travel down to them and wash away the vestiges of the previous day’s awkwardness. “We made something wonderful, didn’t we?”

“Sure did,” Jane confirmed, “and she’ll save this vacation yet.”

Maura shook her head with a grateful smile. “I meant us. What we have. Though she’s pretty great, too.” Jane’s eyes opened, and she smiled widely, cockily. Maura rolled her eyes. “And I say we make her grandparents come to her next summer. We’ll do Remy’s, Yawkey Way, and everything in between.”

Jane barked with laughter. “That’s the plan. But maybe we should pump the breaks and see how today goes first.”

“Today is already going great,” Maura said, taking the last of Jane’s espresso and finishing it off. She stood, bowl in hand, and smiled down at Jane one last time before leaving for the kitchen. “Far better than I could have hoped.”

**Author's Note:**

> The Polo Grounds were a sporting complex in Upper Manhattan from the late 19th century up until the 1960s. The New York Mets, Yankees, Giants, and Jets all played there at some point in time, and they were originally built for polo. Baseball fanatics know the Polo Grounds most recently as the home of the Mets, before they were knocked down and Shea Stadium was erected.


End file.
